Strictly for kids: In defense of the idea behind The Oogieloves.

The Oogieloves in the Big Balloon Adventure is officially past tense.  After one of the worst wide-release theatrical performances in modern history, the picture is gone from every one of its 2,100 screens with just $1 million to its name.  Its fate is now that of "ironic" screenings in college dorm rooms and the phrase "pulling an Oogielove" entering our pop culture vernacular.  I have not seen the picture and can't say if I ever will.  But I cannot and will not mock the film because it represents something that has pretty much disappeared from multiplexes over the last ten years.  Scott Stabile wrote a passionate defense of the movie he wrote last week, which you can read here.  I don't agree with every word, but he's tapped into what The Oogieloves in the Big Balloon Adventure tried to be, something that I'd argue is indeed worthwhile: the truly 'for kids' movie.  It wasn't trying to appeal to all audiences, it wasn't trying to secretly be hip enough for grown-ups or 'cool' enough for older kids.  It was merely a movie for young kids, perhaps painfully so.  There is something to be said for a film that was arguably trying to be a kid's first movie.

Going broke chasing boys: Why Disney ditched princesses and spent $300 million on John Carter, and what it means for the Mouse House's core demo.

If you've seen the trailer for the upcoming John Carter, you know that not only does it not look like it cost $300 million, but it so painfully feels like a Mad Libs male-driven fantasy blockbuster that it borders on parody.  It's no secret that Disney thinks it has a boy problem. One of the reasons it bought Marvel two years ago was to build up a slate of boy-friendly franchises.  And the last two years have seen an almost embarrassing attempt to fashion boy-friendly franchises (Prince of Persia, Tron: Legacy, The Sorcerer's Apprentice, I Am Number Four, Fright Night,  and Real Steel), only half of which were even as successful as their alleged flop The Princess and the Frog (which obviously grossed 'just' $267 million on a $105 million budget because it starred a character with a vagina).  We can only ponder the reasons why Disney decided to outright state that they were never going to make another fairy-tale princess cartoon again, even after Tangled became their most successful non-Pixar toon since The Lion King, but I'm pretty sure Disney won't be making such statements about boy-centric fantasy franchises anytime soon.

Tron: Legacy + Spy Kids 3D = something much better than Tron: Legacy.

A close friend of mine put this up, so thank goodness I actually liked it...  It mashes a  Tron: Legacy trailer, fashioned off the first terrific teaser and uses Spy Kids 3: Game Over footage.  Aside from a bit of awkward George Clooney as Bruce Boxleitner dubbing, it's pretty successful.  More importantly, as someone who really hated Tron: Legacy, this made me laugh my ass off.  Considering that Rodriguez's 2003 sequel cost just $39 million, it's almost offensive how much more exciting, colorful and imaginative the film was than the $200 million would-be franchise reboot that was positioned as 'the next big thing'. Spy Kids 3D has some issues (too little of our adult stars for one), but it's a stunningly exciting bit of family-friendly action filmmaking and it's ahead-of-its-time 3D work still holds up, even if it is the last of the old-fashioned red-and-blue technique.  The trailer accomplishes two things.  It makes me hate Tron: Legacy even more while making me want to watch Spy Kids 3D again.  And, as a side benefit, it reminds me to look forward to this month's Spy Kids 4: All the Time In the World.

Scott Mendelson    

Weekend Box Office (01/02/11): Little Fockers, True Grit dominate New Year's weekend, family films stay above water.

As is usually the case for New Year's weekend, there are no new wide releases, leaving the field for holdover domination and a couple smaller pictures to make a last-minute Oscar-qualifying limited opening. Little Fockers once again topped the box office over the weekend, although it was much closer than expected. The big news was the incredible staying power of True Grit, which dropped just 1.7% from last weekend's terrific opening sprint. The critically-acclaimed Coen brothers western grossed another $24.4 million, compared to last weekend's $24.8 million opening three-day haul. Drops like that are generally reserved for the likes of Avatar and The Sixth Sense. With $86.6 million in twelve days, the film is easily the highest-grossing picture for the Coens. The film is obviously playing like a general audiences smash and has become a front-runner at this year's Oscars. It is also on track to crack $100 million in the next week or so, and it will easily surpass the $113 million gross of Wild, Wild West to become the second-highest grossing western in US history, behind the $184 million haul of Dances with Wolves. Oscar win or no Oscar win, this is a huge and genre-reviving triumph for everyone involved.

2010 in Review: The 'Worst' Films of the Year.

I use the term 'worst' subjectively, both because I'm stating subjective opinions and because there are plenty of allegedly terrible films that I did not see this year (Yogi Bear, Gulliver's Travels, Sex and the City 2, Little Fockers, Grown Ups, etc). Sadly, this was the first year in as long as I've been doing this where it was easier to make up a 'worst of year' than a 'best of year'. Not because there were so few good films, but because there were so many astonishing failures from some of my favorite filmmakers. So, without further ado, and in alphabetical order, I give you my personal picks for the ten worst films of 2010.

Alice in Wonderland
It is a strange thing to see a director that you worshiped in your youth score by-far the biggest hit of his life from one of the worst films of his career. Yet Alice in Wonderland is easily Burton's worst film, give-or-take Planet of the Apes (the latter is duller, but I love the 'up yours' ending). The screenplay turns Alice into a passive character defined by predestination and what other people expect from her and then expects us to find the film a rousing piece of female-empowerment. The result is an equally passive film that contains no suspense and no driving force. The film is inexplicably ugly to look at, and the 3D only muddies the image that much more. This was an assembly-line paycheck job for all involved, and a sign that, traumatized by the box office failure of (the secretly right-wing?) Mars Attacks and the outrage over Batman Returns back in the 1990s, Burton may have given up any attempt to be a visual or narrative original. If this were any one else's artistic failure, it would simply be a very dull and uninspiring film. But coming from Tim Burton, it was just one of the heartbreaking failures of the year.

Weekend Box Office (12/26/10): Little Fockers opens soft, True Grit opens strong, Tron: Legacy flounders.

I remember being genuinely shocked at the success of Meet the Fockers back in Christmas 2004. It had been well over four years since the original and, box office aside, it wasn't a film that cried out for a sequel. I figured that no one cared, that it had been too long since the original, and that the sequel would do token business but no more. For the second time in 2004, I was dead-wrong. Twice that year, sequels that didn't have all that much pre-release buzz around them exploded out of the gate and kept going for the next few months. The other was Shrek 2, which opened out of nowhere on the pre-Memorial Day weekend to $108 million over three days and $128 million over five, to end up winning the year with an astonishing $441 million. Meet the Fockers grossed $46 million over the three-day portion of Christmas 2004 and a stunning $70 million in its five-day opening weekend. The film kept on rolling, ending up with $279 million domestic and $516 million worldwide. That makes Meet the Fockers the second-biggest live-action comedy in US history (behind Home Alone with $281 million) and the world's highest-grossing live-action comedy ever. So when I say that there wasn't all that much buzz for Little Fockers, that really didn't mean much in theory. Except this time, when it did.

Wednesday Box Office: Little Fockers opens soft(ish), True Grit and Tron: Legacy battle for number two.

Little Fockers was number one at the box office over the first day of the five-day Christmas holiday. But it was a much tighter race than expected, as True Grit held its own and Tron: Legacy remained steady. Little Fockers, the much-unanticipated finale to Fockers trilogy ('This Christmas... the journey ends.'), debuted with $7.2 million. By any normal standards, this would be a solid Wednesday debut for a comedy. But Meet the Fockers (a film that wasn't insanely anticipated either six long years ago) opened its Christmas long-weekend with $12.2 million. That film, which had much better reviews, ended up with $70 million by the end of the long weekend, or a 5.7x weekend multiplier. Should Little Fockers follow suit, it will end the long-weekend with $41 million, or about $5 million less that Meet the Fockers made in the Fri-Sun portion of its opening weekend.

Weekend Box Office (12/18/10): Tron: Legacy opens just okay, Yogi Bear and How Do You Know underperform, Black Swan and The Fighter expand.

Opening following a flurry of advance press and geek-frenzy spanning back three years, Tron: Legacy scored an okay $43 million in its opening weekend. Regardless of my feelings on the film (REVIEW), this is a good but not great for a film that was a big question mark. Would the film play to general audiences, or would it become a super-budgeted version of Kick-Ass or Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, playing only to the hardcore geek audience? Tracking had the film opening as low as $30 million, which for the allegedly $200 million+ production would have been a disaster. But at least approaching the $45 million mark allows Disney to save some face. Yes that includes the usual 3D/IMAX ticket-price bump, but it also has a disadvantage of being the kind of film that few would willingly see in a 2D theater (the film played 71% 3D and a whopping 24% IMAX). The film opened with $3.6 million in midnight screenings and a $18 million opening day, before dropping to $15 million on Saturday and $10 million on Sunday. That gives the film a mediocre 2.39x weekend multiplier, implying that it's playing just slightly more like a general audiences genre picture than a hardcore nerd niche-picture that many feared. On most normal weekends, this kind of opening would have been very bad news. But this is the weekend before Christmas...

"The weekend before Christmas is a terrible time for movies". It's apparently opposite-day yet again over at Nikki Finke's Deadline Hollywood.

Here's a not-so dirty secret: the weekend before Christmas weekend is the very best weekend to open a film, bar none. With a full two weeks of 'weekend days' and families spending much of that time together and looking towards a movie theater, anything that can open on this weekend has a decent shot at huge legs. Sure, you've got the obvious smash hits like Avatar ($77 million opening/$750 million domestic), Fellowship of the Ring ($47m/$313m), The Two Towers($65m/$341m), Return of the King ($83m/$373m), Titanic ($28m/$600m), Tomorrow Never Dies ($25m/$125m), The Pursuit of Happyness ($26m/$163m), Jerry Macguire($17m/$153m), and I Am Legend ($77m/$256m). But you also have the films that maybe didn't open as well as they could, but used the holiday period to make up for it with insanely leggy runs. I'm talking about King Kong ($50m opening weekend/$218 million domestic total), The Prince of Egypt ($14m/$101m), Mouse Hunt ($6m/$61m), Sabrina ($5m/$53m), and The Emperor's New Groove($10m/$89m) among many others.

So when Nikki Finke claims that "the last full weekend before Christmas is traditionally a lousy time for North American grosses", she obviously has no idea what she's talking about. And that 'unnamed studio mogul who exclaims: "They're not rushing out to see movies. What you tend to forget, going into this weekend, is that the pool of people who are available, and don’t have a lot of commitments on their time in terms of parties and presents and vacations, is small", well he obviously has no recollection of the oh-so-recent past either (or he's just covering for the under-performances of Yogi Bear and How Do You Know). How vexing it is when the people who get paid to know this stuff get it so obviously wrong.

Scott Mendelson

Tron: Legacy grosses $18 million in first day.

Not much to report that can't wait for tomorrow when the weekend numbers are announced, but Tron: Legacy opened with $18 million on its first full day. That's a bit above the $14 million opening Fridays for Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring and King Kong, slightly below the $19 million opening Friday of Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, but far below the $21 million Friday of Lord of the Rings: Return of the King. Of course, all the noted films opened on Wednesday. In terms of films that opened on this weekend on a Friday, it's well below the $26 million scored by Avatar and the $30 million snagged by I Am Legend, but it's above the $10 million opening-day gross of Lemony Snicket: A Serious of Unfortunate Events. 20% of its first-day take came from midnight screenings. That's a bit high, as 15% is the norm, but it's not anywhere near the sky-high midnight grabs for Paranormal Activity 2 ($6.3m/$19m - 33%), Twilight Saga: New Moon ($26m/$72m - 36%), Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince ($22m/$58m - 37%), Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part I ($24m/$61m - 39%), or Twilight Saga: Eclipse ($30m/$68m - 44%). So unless the world at large hates the movie as much as I do (who knows... I thought Transformers 2 would get kneecapped over the long weekend), give the film a 2.5x multiplier and a $45 million opening weekend.

Scott Mendelson

Tron: Legacy nets $3.6 million in midnight sneaks. Could open with as little as $19 million, as much as $80 million for the weekend.

Tron: Legacy has grossed $3.5 million in midnight showings. That slightly exceeds the $3.6 million earned by Avatar's midnight sneaks last year on this weekend and actually exceeds the $3 million earned by respective late-night Inception screenings. The film grossed 25% of its midnight numbers in IMAX screens, which is a record for the large-screen format. What does this mean for the opening weekend? Well, generally speaking, recent midnight screenings have accounted for about 5-6% of a film's overall weekend take, which would put a weekend estimate between and $58 million and $70 million. Think Iron Man 2 ($7.5m/$128m), Jackass 3D ($2.5m/$50m), and Inception ($3m/$62m). But more front-loaded films have seen their midnight takes make up 11-19% of their total. Examples: The Dark Knight ($18m/$158m), Paranormal Activity 2 ($6.3m/$41m), Twilight Saga: New Moon ($26m/$142m) and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part I ($24m/$125m).

Review: Tron: Legacy: an IMAX 3D Experience (2010)

Tron: Legacy
2010
125 minutes
rated PG

by Scott Mendelson

Tron: Legacy almost operates as a litmus test for how much we will tolerate in our tent-pole film making. Just how much bad dialogue, poor acting, inexplicable plotting, and emotionally-vapid characterizations will we accept as long as we've been convinced that the film is 'cool'? How little actual content will we demand in exchange for $300 million light shows disguised as motion pictures? We casually accept seemingly intentional mediocrity in our franchise films, from The Flintstones to Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, holding our nose but making these films into smash hits. I am reminded of Patrick Stewart's monologue towards the end of Star Trek: First Contact. "The line must be drawn here. This far, and no further." If we as moviegoers accept this artless, soulless confection as a suitable example of big-budget filmmaking, then we deserve everything we get in the following years. The apparent absence of any attempt at quality renders even the (only occasionally) pretty pictures impotent and dull. And make no mistake; Tron: Legacy is a stunningly dull would-be movie.

Weekend Box Office (12/11/10): Voyage of the Dawn Treader crashes, Tourist underwhelms, The Fighter and Black Swan shine in limited release.

It was a gruesome weekend for wide releases, as two sure-fire openers underperformed, which frankly ought to make Disney very nervous for next weekend. Debuting at a somewhat soft number one was The Chronicles of Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Treader. The picture is the third in the Chronicles of Narnia series, and likely the last. The first two films in the series were financed in a joint venture between Walden Entertainment and Walt Disney. But after the (comparatively) underwhelming domestic performance of the second film in the series, Prince Caspian, Disney cut its losses and 20th Century Fox picked up the popular fantasy franchise. With a $24.5 million opening weekend for a $140 million venture, Fox will likely do the same cutting and running unless overseas numbers astound. This opening weekend is nearly identical to The Golden Compass, which opened with $25 million on this weekend in December 2007. That infamous 'flop' cost $180 million and ended up with just $70 million in the US. Of course, the film grossed $302 million overseas, so Fox has to be praying for a similar result (the worldwide opening was a promising $81 million).

Thor gets a bland theatrical trailer, which is the Cliff Notes version of the bland Comic Con footage.

If you've seen the Comic Con footage, there is precious little new here. I can't say if this trailer will debut in theaters this weekend with The Chronicles of Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Treader or next weekend with Tron: Legacy. The pace is still slower than dirt, the acting still is overly arch, and the film still looks like a $200 million redo of the Masters of the Universe movie. As always, we'll see.

Scott Mendelson

Thor gets a poster. Joy.

The trailer will apparently be screened with Tron: Legacy next weekend. It's allegedly just a slimmed-down version of the terrible Comic-Con footage that debuted last July. You'd think Paramount would wait and debut the Thor trailer with True Grit, unless they already have a Captain America teaser all set to go... We'll know soon enough.

Scott Mendelson

Transformers: Dark of the Moon gets a teaser.

This is a pure tease, with only a token amount of Transformers footage at the very end. Ironically, as I've mentioned before, when I saw the first Transformers on opening night, I was sure that what turned out to be the Cloverfield teaser was in fact an early tease for Star Trek. This teaser uses a similar 'we're in the real world until we're not' ploy, and it's usually pretty effective. Up until the onscreen credits appear for Michael Bay and Steven Spielberg, the only hint is the low-key version of the franchise theme music (which I rarely like). Michael Bay swears that Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen was a victim of the writer's strike and he arguably has something to prove for the first time in awhile. We can likely expect a teaser with actual giant robots to premiere with the Super Bowl like last time. For now, we can enjoy this little bit of tease, with only the oddly F. Murray Abraham-looking robot at the end offering any evidence that this is in fact a Transformers film. This will premiere in theaters this weekend with The Chronicles of Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

Scott Mendelson

First look at Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. Friends don't let friends debut the first footage of their movie on Entertainment Tonight.

If you watch this on 'MUTE', it actually looks okay. There seems to be a token amount of real stunt work and it feels a bit more earthbound than the sequels. The trailer premieres on Monday, December 13th after which it will be attached to Tron: Legacy (which I will be seeing on December 13th; waiting for the IMAX screening). Anyway, you know my feelings on Entertainment Tonight, but if you want it, here you go.

Scott Mendelson

A theoretical Catch 22: You have to have seen Tron to understand Tron: Legacy, but Disney won't let you seen Tron.

I generally don't do the whole 'look what this critic wrote', as it's awfully close to just stealing someone else's work for the sake of content. However, now that Tron: Legacy reviews are slowly coming in (pretty positive so far, but I suspect that will even out when the traditional critics see it), there is something that is worth noting. In one of two reviews now up at Rotten Tomatoes, Jenna Busch of JoeBlo.com makes the following comment:

"I just think that all of the things they put in are not going to be understood by people who haven't seen the first film. And there it is. I've spoken to a bunch of people who were at the screening who hadn't. They were bored. Not because it wasn't shiny. Not because they don't like sci-fi. Because they got tired of trying to figure out what the hell was happening. There is a reveal at the end of the film that not one of these people understood. I almost missed it myself, since it was bogged down in other ideas and events."

Tron: Legacy gets a third trailer.

This is an improvement on the second plotless trailer, but it still lacks the film noir menace of the initial teaser. Is it just me, or is the throbbing music (0:49, 1:30, 2:25, etc) trying to deliberately ape the theme from Inception? The third act of this trailer gives away a huge chunk of plot, something that many had already guessed. I'm still on the fence about the project, as frankly I was never a big fan of the first Tron. For what it's worth, my wife is impressed enough by the laser-show visuals that actually she wants to see this (she didn't care for the first Tron either). I assume that Disney will start screening this one after Thanksgiving, unless they follow the Avatar strategy of just having two big screenings the week before the opening. As always, we'll see...

Scott Mendelson

There is no such thing as a 3D movie. 3D is not a genre, it's a tool.

There's a new article out from Anne Thompson, who I usually enjoy, regarding the alleged downturn of 3D. Basically the gist is that 3D is in peril, and the big savior of the format will be Tron: Legacy. The piece itself is harmless, and to be fair it's more of an advertisement for Tron: Legacy than a real discussion about 3D. But it's just another notch in the 'dear god, the 3D sky is falling' bit that forgets the most important part of this whole mess... I'm going to try really hard not to turn this into another endless rant, so bear with me. It's the movie. It's the movie. It's the movie, stupid...